Camden Town and Stone & Wood — ‘brother brewers’

Many of the smaller more independent brewers have a real problem when it comes to getting new customers, if a brewery in London wishes to get its beers out to customers they naturally start in London, this just makes sense, they can walk into a pub ask if they want to try their beers and can easily deliver them, the same is true for small brewers all over the world, this is because the furthur they want to transport the beer the higher the cost will be. This is not really a problem for the big guys who can negotiate a flat up front fee that will see them in thousands of pubs and hundreds of markets overnight, the little guys don’t have the cash wealth of the big guys im afraid. So how do the little guys expand? How are they going to do it? Well Camden Town Brewery and Stone & Wood Brewing Cohave found away around this problem by teaming up and agreeing to distribute each others beers in their respective markets. meaning that Stone & Wood will have Camden Town beers on their trucks in Australia and Camden Town will have Stone & Wood on their vans in London.

These two brewers from opposite ends of the world entered into this agreement as it mutually beneficial because of the massive distance in between the brewers they have never been in competition with each other. This coupled with the fact that this partnership will allow them to both enter very lucrative new markets seems like a win win to me. The only problem I can see in this new scheme though is that both brewers have had problems keeping their respective markets stocked up with the amber nectar.

“It’s not about world domination, but we know there are people who are keen to try our beers and we both believe that having the support of a fellow brewer to introduce our beers to them is the best way to go,” said.Jasper Cuppaidge, of Camden Town Brewery. “The agreement allows us to focus on quality without the commercial pressures of volume from a traditional distribution relationship.

“We both have a healthy respect for the success that each brewery has achieved in a relatively short period of time in their home markets, and believe that their success is largely due to the focus on the quality of the beer being brewed. It is that quality that we are both looking to protect as we ship the beers across the world. Knowing that another quality-focused brewer is nurturing your beer is very important for us.”

I think this could be the start of something beautiful and I hope that more brewers follow this example.